Gravel Culture: Trail Radar
Posted By Gravel Union
On 3 June 2020
Olly goes hunting for the perfect trails on which to ride his gravel bike and starts by looking in the places you wouldn't normally consider.
Apparently military pilots who are being trained to fly Apache helicopters have to use some kind of weird monocle fitted to their helmet which controls some of the weapons systems on-board (something to do with tracking their eye movements and making the weapons follow where they’re looking). The only problem of course is that they also need to be flying the helicopter in the right direction too. So their brains are trained to allow their eyes to follow two different things – one is looking where they want to fly and one is looking where they want the weapons to point.
I reckon most gravel riders would make pretty good Apache pilots, seeing as we spend most of our lives with one eye looking down the trail in front and one scanning the surroundings looking for tiny clues that something worth discovering might be just over there. OK, it’s somewhat of a lazy generalisation to say that all gravel riders do this. I know a few who positively hate looking for new trails and only want to ride stuff they already know and have ridden. But I know plenty of others, who like me, seem to spend their entire life with their Trail Radar turned up to 11.
If I’m a passenger in a car, or staring out the window of a train, or out for a walk, or riding my commute bike into town or in fact doing anything that doesn’t require 100% concentration on the task at hand, then I may well be hunting for trails, or thinking about trails. “Sorry darling, I wasn’t ignoring you. What was the question again?” is quite a common conversation in many a trail hunter’s household I suspect.
I’ll happily ride for hours just to take in one tiny nugget of flowy, sun-dappled trail goodness. Even a few amazing metres can sometimes be enough of a ‘fix’. My best local rides seem to comprise tiny strips of ohmygodthatwasgood trail linked together with bits of road, bike path, shortcuts across a park, urban subways and the occasional flight of steps – the ideal recipe combination for a gravel bike?
I’ve got a section of local trail that runs just the other side of a hedge from a busy motorway. It’s a few hundred metres long, liberally festooned with roots, as noisy as hell (with trucks, busses and cars practically whistling passed your ear hole). It screams at you to ride it flat out. It’s narrow, often greasy, has a couple of bits of buried metal wire just easing themselves into the fresh air from the ground below and it’s pretty lumpy for a gravel bike, but it’s perfect. The fact that the drivers whizzing past just inches away have no idea that you’re there or that there’s something so incredible right next to their tarmac and concrete hell makes it even better.
Some of the best trail “finds” are often on the edge of society. Raggedy bits of waste land, abandoned by all but the hardiest dog walkers, frequently daubed with graffiti, liberally sprinkled with dog-poo landmines and broken glass, smelling of wild garlic at the right time of year, peppered with rabbit holes and armed to the teeth with sections of rusty barbed wire, half bricks and windblown sticks desperate to hurl themselves through your front wheel as you rocket past. To most of society these are places to avoid. But for the skilled trail hunter, a barely visible animal trail wibbling off into a patch of tatty looking scrubland could actually be the fast track to trail Nirvana.
So how do you find these little gems? Intuition, luck, trial and error, gut-feel all play a part. Keep your Apache pilot’s eye open when you’re going about your day-to-day life. You can get all hi-tech and scour Google Earth images, use the route finding genius of komoot, or cajole your high-tech friend with the drone to fly over that patch of waste ground to see what they can see. Or you can just break out your own Trail Sherlock and just look around you for clues and telltale signs.
Don’t be put off by physical or mental barriers - anti-motorbike devices are often wide enough to shimmy through with narrow gravel bars. A bit of alleyway pinball (dodging the small plastic bags of brown dog-slop of course) will improve your skills and your reactions. With the right tyre choice and low enough pressure, a bit of judicious step riding can take you straight to Valhalla (rather than straight to hospital).
Of course, as with any relationship, trails need some love to keep them running sweetly. Once in a while, move some of the fallen brushwood rather than hopping over it, do some careful bramble pruning, pull up that bit of rusty barbed wire that threatens to slash your tyres each time you hurtle on by. Some careful trail care is good Karma. There’s obviously a fine line between a few carefully considered improvements and just hacking out a new line through the woods somewhere, but most people who use a trail will be appreciative if you move the fallen branch and pick up some of the dropped litter.
There’s a lot to be said for riding local. Making the most of what you’ve got. Trying to find your local flow, rather than sitting for hours in a tin box to get somewhere better. With a gravel bike and your Trail Radar you’re all set. Now get out there and start trail hunting.